One of the richest and most versatile strands of cinema in Hollywood’s golden age was the women’s picture: female-centred films, often poised on the threshold of melodrama and noir, whose heroines defied the socially sanctioned limits of their sex. The genre faded in the late 1960s with the rise of Women’s Lib – but Maggie Gyllenhaal’s directorial debut is an unmissable modern-day incarnation.
Thoughtfully adapted from a 2006 novel by the Italian writer Elena Ferrante, it is a mesmerisingly assured drama of thwarted desire and simmering menace, with a trio of outstanding performances from Olivia Colman, Jessie Buckley and Dakota Johnson. It is a film about motherhood, but one that daringly explores its most unsayable aspects: the resentment, the gnawing remorse over long-past mistakes, the lovingly nursed fantasies of childlessness and dreams of professional and romantic paths that went untrod. I wouldn’t presume to suggest what female viewers specifically might get out of it, though I can tell you this male one laughed, was moved and squirmed in sympathy throughout, while his conscience prickled as if it was being hugged by a hedgehog.
Colman stars as Leda Caruso, a literary translator who takes a solo trip to a quiet stretch of coast in Greece, where she can unwind, enjoy the sun, and immerse herself in her work. But the resort turns out to be less tranquil than hoped. One morning, a large and raucous family group swarm onto the shore and all but commandeer it. Leda’s distaste is plain to see – Colman plays the moment perfectly, spiking Leda’s entirely legitimate disgruntlement with a top note of snobbery, as this boorish clan play music and squawk obscenities at the tops of their lungs.
The heavily pregnant Callie (Succession’s Dagmara Dominczyk) abruptly asks Leda to move her sun lounger to give them more space; Leda politely but firmly declines, and you feel yourself bracing for a bloodbath. But what follows is arguably worse: in the eyes of this unpleasant lot, Leda becomes “that woman”, and an air of watch-your-back tension descends. Later, while walking the forest trail back to her villa, she hears a rustle in the boughs and is suddenly struck by something between the shoulder blades – a pine cone, probably. But did it fall or was it chucked?
Morning brings a chance for reconciliation. One of the family, a pretty, enigmatic young woman called Nina (Dakota Johnson), suddenly realises her young daughter Elena has wandered off from the group. Leda joins the search, finds her in a nearby cove, and returns her to her distraught relatives. But in a move as seemingly unaccountable as Meursault’s murder of the Arab in Camus’s L’Etranger, she also steals the girl’s beloved doll, and sneaks it back to her villa in her beach bag. The missing toy causes almost as much uproar as the missing kid: wanted posters go up around town, and you start to fear for Leda’s safety.
